


All That's Best of Dark and Bright

by junkyardjeditrash



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Regency, Ben is grumpy, Canon Age Difference, F/M, Leia Organa Ships It, Leia is magic, No Underage Sex, Rey Is A Cinnamon Roll, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:27:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28427007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junkyardjeditrash/pseuds/junkyardjeditrash
Summary: Miss Rey Palpatine doesn't wish to make her social debut and find a husband, no matter what her grandfather insists. Her dearest friend and ally, Lady Leia, promises that her grumpy son, Lord Benjamin Organa-Solo, will help keep any unwanted suitors away. It's a perfect plan.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 13
Kudos: 63





	All That's Best of Dark and Bright

It had been tedious morning of listening to the other men at White’s talk horseflesh. Sir Benjamin Organa-Solo would have much preferred a dash of silence to go along with his coffee and newspaper, but there was a hefty bet about a horse race, and Dameron simply would not hear of discussing anything else.

Aggravating in the extreme.

With a frustrated huff, he folded his newspaper, collected his coat and hat and stepped out into the brisk London morning. The streets were bustling with activity, but he had no particular place to be. It was not the Season, after all, and most of the ton had retreated to their country estates.

Benjamin ambled along, glancing down at his pocket watch, mentally calculating how many hours he had until his appointment at the boxing saloon. It was amounting to be a particularly dull day, he thought to himself, considering that perhaps he shouldn’t have come down from Cambridge so soon. At least he could have busied himself studying and arguing with the fellows of St. Catharine’s College, instead of trying and failing to find any enjoyment in being an idle lordling.

This moment’s thought was interrupted as blur of gray and brown careened around the corner and right into him with the force of seemingly ten leaden cannonballs.

“Oof!” he grunted, taking a staggering step or two backwards, realizing after a second that it was a child who had nearly knocked him senseless. A skinny, young lad from the look of it, who was all shocked, horrified hazel eyes underneath a bedraggled cap.

“Pardon me, sir!” the lad exclaimed in a high pitch, equally off-balance from the impact, backing away from the tall man’s broad torso quickly, his narrow, dirty face suddenly suffused with color.

“Oh, damn!” the lad cries out again, watching the iced bun he’d been clutching roll across the dirty street, too filthy to be consumed now. Well, what was left of the iced bun, that is, for a goodly smear of icing and crumbs now spread across the front of Benjamin’s topcoat. His valet would be certain to complain about that.

Ben’s hand grabbed the boy’s upper arm firmly as if to steady him on his feet. The urchin’s eyes were arrested on his face, at first in astonishment, then with a world-weary apprehension much older than this child’s years.

Ben was similarly arrested by the face of the lad whose arm he grasped, his eyes moving with confusion at first, then increasingly clarity, over the pointed chin, straight nose, and delicate brow. The calculation seemed to be made quickly, and he reached with his free hand toward the lad’s dun-colored cap.

“What have we here?” he asked, trying to suppress mild laughter as he pulled the cap from the young street urchin’s head.

Long chestnut hair tumbled down, cascading over thin shoulders. Hazel eyes, flecked with green and gold, widened, and a curl of fear rippled through the child’s stomach. Not just a child. A young girl.

The morning was certainly more interesting than he’d assumed it would be.

The man grasping her did not seem particularly menacing, but Rey knew well enough that a man’s mood could shift quick enough.

His eyes moved over her from head to toe, assessing the shabby coat and shirt and the worn, wool pants. Scuffed boots with the sole beginning to pull away on one foot. Stolen, of course. All of it.

“Where’d you get the trousers, young lady?” His voice was curious, rather than concerned, about the legality of her wardrobe acquisition.

“They’re mine,” she stated flatly, wrenching her arm from his grasp and snatching her cap back. “I’ll be on my way now, thank you.”

Miss Rey Palpatine looked over her shoulder at the bustling street, eyebrows knitting together as she calculated her best path forward. Her shoulders drooped when she realized she didn’t precisely know where she was going. The stranger hadn’t moved, however, and he’d just shoved his hands into his coat pockets, watching her with an expression that seemed increasingly amused, which rankled her ire immensely.

“And which way is that?” he asked her mildly.

Stymied, Rey bit her lip as she tucked her hair up under the cap quickly.

“I’m for the docks. I’ve a ship to catch.”

His eyebrows quirked, and she saw the first flicker of disapproval in his face.

“What ship?”

“Any ship,” she said quickly. “Kindly point me in the correct direction, would you, sir?”

The young lord looked her over again with that assessing look, and Rey felt her heart pound frantically as she realized he was deciding whether she were I’m a moment’s lark or something altogether more time-consuming. Already he knew too much. Soon he’d be guessing she wasn’t a London street child, let alone a boy. Bollocks. Bloody, buggary, bollocks.

Benjamin would bet a pair of matched grays that this child was indeed a runaway schoolgirl, and a genteel one at that, and not just a ragamuffin running from a scrape. The girl was about to make a terrible mistake if he didn’t intervene. With a pained sigh, he shifted his weight on his feet, ignoring the pinch of his new boots.

“Leaving home to be a sailor, are you, young lady?”

“Mr. Palpatine, to you, sir,” she muttered, glaring at him. “And I mean to make my own way in the world.”

Ben nodded as if he were in agreement with her very serious statement. He made up his mind then, his course of action. The little urchin would be angry, but her current plan had her on a collision course with utter disaster. Even if she managed to fool anyone at the merchant sailor hall long enough to gain work on a ship, living in such close quarters with grown men would expose her all too quickly. And from there, her safety would surely be forfeit.

“Well, come with me then, Mr. Palpatine. I happen to have some business in that direction, and it would be no trouble.”

Ben resisted the urge to offer her his arm, guessing she would rather maintain the fiction of being a boy.

Rey’s eyes swept across his face suspiciously, but she realized that at this particular moment, a better option simply did not exist.

“Thank you, sir. I am much obliged,” she said stiffly, if politely, struggling to school her words and her expression from its usual girlishness.

He may have figured her out, but no one else had given her half a glance since her flight from home a week ago. And frankly, as far as Rey was concerned, it was none of his concern whether she was girl or boy or what plans she had. In fact, it was no one’s concern at all.

They walked alongside each other for many city blocks, with no words spoken between them. Ben sneaked a few glances down at his little companion, trying to ascertain what was inside that ragged little head of hers. Soon enough, they were in Mayfair, and his pace quickened up the steps to a particularly grand townhome, the white marble façade gleaming in the afternoon sunlight.

Rey felt a tickle of apprehension, realizing quickly that the docks couldn’t possibly be anywhere near such a grand square as this.

“Sir, you’ve led me off course,” she whispered heatedly as a pulse of fear shivered through her body, refraining from following any further.

Her heart began to pound wondering what game he played at, and she began to turn on her heel, preparing to bolt.

But lightning quick, his hand gripped her arm again, iron in his fingertips as he kept her in place.

“Young lady, you were already off course, I fear,” he said firmly.

At least he wasn’t denying his perfidy, but Rey struggled against his grasp anyway. A futile effort indeed, seeing as he had at least twelve inches of height and was easily twice her weight.

“It is none of your concern. Let me alone, or I shall scream!”

He groaned and hauled her up the last few steps and rapped upon the front door, rolling his eyes at the squirming, angry dear girl. As soon as the butler opened the door, Ben gently pushed her inside and stepped in behind her.

“No need to scream. Not one bit of harm shall come to you,” he informed her sternly, then looked at the butler.

Cedric Threepenny had been with the family since well before Benjamin’s birth some 22 years before, and he was used to all manner of guests, as well as the family’s idiosyncratic comings and goings. So if seeing the son of the house, though no longer a resident, dragging an angry street urchin into the elegant foyer would be considered irregular, his expression belied no such notion. He merely shut the door with quiet dignity.

“Welcome, Sir Benjamin.” 

His eyes moved over the skinny creature then back to Ben’s face, taking note of the young man’s expression which seemed to war between bemused, concerned, and frustrated.

“Is my mother at home, Threepenny?” he asked, releasing the girl’s arm. “This young lady requires a chaperone until we can determine where she rightly belongs.”

“I don’t belong anyw-” Rey began to spit out, but she was quickly cut off as the men spoke over her. Her fingers curled and uncurled as she tried to contain her rage.

“She’s in her parlor upstairs, I believe.”

“Alone, I hope?”

“Yes, sir. Her afternoon callers have just departed.”

Ben huffed an exhalation of the purest relief. Their family was known for tending toward eccentricity, but there was no need to expose the girl to potential embarrassment.

He touched her elbow lightly, and after giving him a sullen look, Rey followed him up the stairs.

~~~

Lady Leia Organa-Solo sat at her escritoire penning a lengthy accounting of the preceding evening’s musicale to her dearest friend, Mrs. Amilyn Holdo. They’d grown up together, and she never failed to write to her at least once weekly. She’d had the excellent fortune to marry a Baron, and Amilyn had wed with the good Reverend Holdo, who had taken over the country parish living near her family’s estate.

As she mused on the musical selections from the evening, she scarcely heard the door click open, and did not turn until she heard her son clear his throat before stepping into the room.

“Hmm? Oh, Benjamin! I did not expect you today—though it is a delight to be sure,” she said with a surfeit of warmth as she rose from her seat. Her face beamed with positive delight as she looked upon her only child.

“Ah, yes, well I have need of your aid, Mother,” he said, suddenly feeling a spark of uncertainty that he’d so impulsively intervened and grabbed a young girl off the street.

Perhaps that wasn’t quite the thing, even if his intentions were for the best. He motioned with his head for Rey to step forward, and she did, obediently, though he could see from the stiffness in her neck that she was furious.

“What is this?” his mother asked, looking at the child with some astonishment.

Her warm, brown eyes swept over what she assumed to be a skinny, dirty boy and she looked back at Benjamin with expectation of an answer.

“Hat.”

This word was directed to the object of confusion who stood with increasing discomfiture in the well-appointed parlor, looking mightily out of place amongst the delicate furnishings and scarcely able to pull their eyes from the thick oriental carpet.

Rey pulled the cap from her head, releasing the tumbling waves of chestnut hair again, and she looked up from the floor to meet Lady Leia’s eyes with a fearful but defiant expression.

Lady Leia, however, simply seemed intrigued, as if having a little mystery was just the thing to liven up her day.

“Mother, may I present Miss Palpatine to you? There is some confusion as to whether she is Miss or Mister, but I dare say, I think she is Miss Palpatine.”

He stifled a laugh, feeling less concerned for the girl’s safety now that he had the girl in his mother’s presence.

“Miss Palpatine, may I present my mother, the Lady Leia Organa-Solo?”

The scarecrow of a child curtsied awkwardly, and his mother’s keen eyes darted between him and the child and back again, her face impassive.

“I dare say, how did you two come to know one another?”

She motioned for Ben to take a seat, and she motioned again for the girl to join her on the settee, which she did awkwardly with the gait of a girl who’s growing faster than she knows how to manage. The girl had a nice shape to her face and a notably fine profile. But she was thin and dirty, all the same.

Rey didn’t resist Lady Leia, sensing no danger from the woman. She cut a quick glance to …Benjamin, was it?... and she considered that a man with ill intent would not have brought her straightaway to his own mother.

“I bumped into him, my lady,” she said softly. “I was running and paying no mind as I turned a corner.”

At the sound of the girl’s clear, genteel speech, Lady Leia tilted her head as she assessed the girl’s face again, this time studying her eyes before turning to look at Ben. She tilted her head with a silent question that Ben ignored.

“She nearly took me off my feet, frankly,” he said with a laugh. “And she cursed mightily when she dropped her iced bun. As if it were my fault!”

“I did not!” she says, face aflame.

“I see. And you realized that it was not a lad who knocked into you, but a young lady.”

Leia pursed her lips thoughtfully, a small hmmmm coming from her throat.

“What’s your name, Miss Palpatine? Who are your people?” Leia asked softly. There were so many questions to ask.

“I don’t have people, and it’s Mr. Palpatine, ma’am. I want to catch ship and go to the Americas. Your son said he would take me to the docks, because I did not know the way.”

Rey cast him an angry glance. “He lied to me.”

Ben smiled and shrugged without a trace of regret and stood to go to the bell pull. When a maid came, he asked for a tea tray to be brought up. Their altercation earlier had cost the girl her iced bun, and he had an idea it had either been bought with the last of what little money she must have been carrying, or even likelier, pinched, which is why she was running in the first place.

Lady Leia placed a soft, dainty hand upon Rey’s. She could sense the girl’s fear, and she felt a tug of memory in her heart, and then something else flittered through her chest that was so familiar, she blinked in surprise. But Lady Leia betrayed none of her emotions, pushing them aside for the moment to muse on this skinny, dirty child.

Her son had always brought home strays. So many wounded birds and dogs and cats and bunnies until she and her late husband were exasperated at the effort to keep all and sundry healthy, fed, and housed.

“Miss Palpatine? For I fear it IS Miss Palpatine, may I speak plainly?”

Rey nodded slightly, biting her lower lip. Ben watched with interest from across the room.

“You are very young, my dear, and your speech is genteel. I do not think you are a street urchin. If you try to take ship, you will find yourself quite out of your depth. If you’ve already been found out for a girl, how long do you imagine it would have taken a ship full of sailors? You were in imminent danger, and my son was wise to see it.”

Rey lowered her eyes to the floor.

“You must be very brave. And very clever. You’ve come a long way, yes?” her voice was gentle, and she reached a hand to tuck a lock of hair behind the girl’s ear.

“Yes, my lady. I’m from Northampton. I’ve never been to London before. I only arrived yesterday.”

“And you don’t know anyone here, do you?”

Leia patted the girl’s hand, and she looked up in time to see the maid bring in the tea tray Benjamin had ordered. She glanced to the side table near to where they sat, and she proceeded to put a little sandwich on a plate and hand it to the girl, and she set about pouring her a cup of tea, as well.

“No, my lady.”

Rey tucked into the little sandwich eagerly, her hunger acute after missing out on the opportunity to eat the iced bun earlier. Truth be told, she hadn’t eaten a hot meal in a week, and her stomach was beginning to feel as if it would shrivel.

Ben shifted in his seat, leaning forward so that his forearms rested on the tops of his thighs, his eyes observing her intently.

“Miss Palpatine, may I ask your name? And your age?” He rose to fetch the cup of tea his mother prepared for him, taking a closer seat to two.

Rey patted her mouth with a napkin before speaking, the desire to keep her own council warring with the instinct that perhaps these were friends. People who could help her.

“Rey. Rey Palpatine. And I’m 12. And a half,” she added quickly, thinking it might help them see her as less of a child, but then realizing that such insistence only would affirm the fact of her youth.

“Oh, dear,” Lady Leia sighed.

She took a lengthy sip of tea, and she exchanged a long look with Benjamin.

Benjamin began slowly, his tone serious, as he studied her face, “Are you running from something? Someone? Is there trouble at home?”

“I…” she drifted off, looking between the two nervously.

No, she quickly decided. She had given them too much information already, and she feared the help more than she feared the unknown.

“I am sorry to trouble you, but I must be on my way.”

Rey set down the plate and the teacup abruptly and began to rise from the settee where she sat with Lady Leia. She curtsied awkwardly.

“I beg that I might take my leave of you. Thank you for the tea.”

Rey began to back away from the Organa-Solos, but her departure was short-lived.

“Benjamin, stop her!” Leia exclaimed, a panic of color on her cheeks, rising to her feet. Her son would be much quicker in preventing the young lady from making an escape. “Miss Palpatine, please do not run. _Please_.”

Ben was quickly at her side, his large hands covering her narrow shoulders as he coaxed her forward and back onto his mother’s settee. The young girl exhaled a shuddering breath, and she stared at her feet. And quietly, her tale of woe tumbled forth.

~~~

For the first ten years of her life, Miss Regina Palpatine, called Rey, the much-loved only child of Steven and Delilah Palpatine had known nothing but kindness and affection.

When she was a plump and cosseted baby, every morning, a nanny would bring her to breakfast, where her parents would make much of their little girl, kissing her cheeks and bouncing her in their arms while they ate and read their daily correspondence. It was not quite the thing for people of their station to let their child spend so much time out of the nursery, but they could not help themselves. They were but the second generation of wealth, and they felt no compunction to emulate the nobs any more than necessary.

There had been no more children after Rey, and she became all the more precious to her doting parents. They took her on rambling adventures through the countryside and read with her each evening. As Rey grew older, into a skinny, gangly girl with an infectious smile and a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose, her parents employed a governess for her, and saw to her education as a young lady.

When Rey was ten, Steven and Delilah took ill with typhoid and died, leaving the girl suddenly in the care of her grandfather, a Mr. Sheev Palpatine, with whom she was little acquainted. On a good day, Sheev Palpatine could be characterized as cantankerous, but unfortunately for all who knew him, those good days happened when a hawk held a handsaw.

He owned half the shoe manufacturers in Northampton, as well as countless tanneries that supplied the leather. With the Napoleonic Wars, the outfitting of soldiers was a lucrative trade, and Palpatine’s shoes and boots were much in demand. He’d made a fortune. Two or three fortunes, really, as he invested his money and collected on the interest. He wasn’t a decent man, but he was clever. And he decided, as his wealth grew, that the suitable reward for such cleverness could only be his family’s acceptance into high society.

On some days, he considered that it was almost better that Rey was left to him. Her parents pampered her far too much, and she was grown spoiled from the affection. She spoke nonsense about travel and sailing the seven seas and could never be found—always climbing trees or hiding in her father’s library. Under their supervision, she likely would have been allowed to make a marriage of personal inclination, which would be to the detriment of his plans. Steven and Delilah hadn’t had the strength to deny her anything. Steven would have been a perfectly adequate heir to his ambitions, but his love for Delilah had weakened him.

Delilah. A glovemaker’s daughter. And she hadn’t even been able to give Steven a son. But never mind that now, Sheev Palpatine at least had the command of Rey. She’d be raised to be a proper lady with a focus on the family ambition. He wouldn’t make the mistakes he’d made in the raising of his son, Steven. There would be no indulgences for Rey. She’d learn true obedience.

And so from the age of ten, Rey’s world shrunk to her grandfather’s drafty house in the grander section of Northampton. It was a coldly formal place, where she was expected to always be quiet, and to never be seen. She was kept to the nursery, and she would be until she was brought out into society at seventeen or eighteen. She had no company, save for her governess, and no outings beyond a daily walk and the weekly trip to church. Once a week, her grandfather would interview her to assess her academic progress, and if she were found wanting, he would box her ears. Fortunately, she was clever with her studies. Unfortunately, she was stubborn and pert.

After her last visit to her grandfather’s library, Rey had decided she’d had enough.

The gloom of her grandfather’s library always was as suffocating as ever. Every adornment in the room seemed designed to intimidate. The draperies were a heavy blue velvet that easily blocked sunlight from streaming into the room, and the furniture large and was oversized, its mahogany gleaming darkly. The Persian carpets were plush underfoot, each step making her feel as if she would sink into the floor, swallowed by the deep reds and blues of the intricately swirling designs. Her grandfather only ever summoned her here, this room that was so much his.

Rey stood nervously before her grandfather’s disapproving gaze. She had been in his presence but ten minutes, and already he had barked at her twice. She’d stumbled in her poetry recitation, forgetting a line under the icy observation that unnerved her, and she had then fidgeted too much while he looked over her sums and figures from her arithmetic lessons. Her hands had bunched in the starched crisp linen of her pinafore, and she had shifted side to side on her feet.

“Enough! Stand still, girl. You’re a deuced annoyance when you fidget about,” he glowers at her, then looks back at her arithmetic. “Your sums are in order. Your handwriting is much improved.” His words are flat and without affection, and Rey notes his eyes sharpening as he looks her over. A hawk’s eyes. Intense and waiting for a moment to take its prey.

“Thank you, grandfather,” she replies steadily, keeping her eyes lowered.

“Are you saying your prayers every night?”

“Yes, grandfather.”

“And no more mischief? You’re doing as Miss Gladwell tells you without any of your stubbornness?”

Rey flushed, remembering last week’s interview. She’d evaded Miss Gladwell on one of their walks, ducking out of her governess’ sight when the woman had stopped to chat with an acquaintance in the park. Rey had taken the opportunity to run down to the stream, and with the sun on her shoulders, warming her thoroughly, she’d given in to the temptation to strip off her shoes and stockings to wade in the icy waters. Miss Gladwell had been angry, and her grandfather had practically vibrated with rage. Her legs had burned for days from the switching he’d administered.

“Yes, grandfather. I’ve been good.”

He leaned back in his chair, the stiff leather creaking behind him. He tapped the fingers of his left hand on top of the desk, drumming them rapidly for a few beats. When he spoke, his voice was oily with satisfaction. She wasn’t used to this tone from him, and she felt her shoulders tighten in anticipation of some ill news.

“I’ve made some decisions for your future. You’re getting to be a big girl.” His fingers tapped again, punctuating some thought he had not as of yet shared with her. The library suddenly seemed a lot smaller. Overfull with furniture. Airless.

He spoke again. “I’ve made a match for you. It is my duty to see you settled well, and I believe I have found an advantageous situation.”

“But Grandfather, I’m…” she struggled to find the right words that wouldn’t sound like a protest or a howl of disagreement. She could feel her heart beating frenetically. “I’m not old enough to marry.”

His silvery brows beetled in displeasure. “Indeed, you are not. But I am growing no younger, and I mean to see our family line raised up in the world before I am too old to enjoy the victory. You are my sole heir, Rey. You have a duty to fulfill. I won’t tolerate ingratitude.”

“Who is he, grandfather?” Her mouth had gone dry.

“The eldest boy of Viscount Hux. Their family has severe debts, and suddenly they are not too proud to let us fill their coffers with our tradesman’s money.” Sheev Palpatine looked at her expectantly, leaning forward at his desk as he spoke, “Well, girl? Aren’t you going to thank me? When you come of age, you’ll be a Viscountess. That’s no small thing for the daughter of a cit and a glovemaker’s girl.”

“Th-thank you, grandfather. I will try to be worthy,” her voice was barely above a whisper at that point, and she wanted nothing more than to run from the library and back to the nursery.

“That’s a damn sight more than your father did, I suppose,” he muttered. “He refused the baronet’s daughter and married your trollop mother instead, and he cost me no small amount of embarrassment. Hear me now, girl. You’ll do as I say. You’ll stay in the nursery until you’re of age to wed the Viscount’s boy.”

Rey bobbed her head quickly in assent, though at this point, every thought roared through her head as noisily as a rushing river, with as much violence. She drowned in that river of thinking, barely pulling herself out in time to curtsy to her grandfather formally, and she quietly let Miss Gladwell take her back upstairs.

~~~

“I hate it there,” she whispered. “Please, don’t tell him I’m in London. I’ll work in your kitchen. I’ll work so hard, I promise. You won’t even know I’m here. I don’t want to be a viscountess. I just want to be away from there.”

Lady Leia pulled the girl into a tight hug, caressing her soft hair in a motherly fashion. Her heart ached for this child, who was so lonely and without hope, and as she rubbed her back, Leia had that sense again. That sense of flickering familiarity, but she could scarce believe it. It wasn’t _possible_.

Rey shuddered and choked back a sob. It had been years since anyone had held her.

“Rey, shh. It’ll be alright,” she soothed. “We do have to contact your grandfather. I’m so sorry, but we must. He is your legal guardian. But perhaps we can intercede on your behalf? Hmm?”

Leia pulled back and brushed the tears from the young girl’s cheeks. Ben offered a handkerchief, fretting about what could be done for her. Her situation was not enviable, but it was not beyond the bounds of law. There was no legal cause against her grandfather, save that he did not seem to understand what a child needed to be happy and healthy.

“I’m going to be punished terribly,” she sniffled. “He switched my legs because I went wading in the stream in the park. He was furious that people would have seen me being a hoyden, ruining my prospects.”

Lady Leia’s mouth set in a grim line, and she shared a weighted glance with her son. There was so little they could truly do for her. The law could not intervene. They’d have to consider other options, and mother and son silently agreed to discuss further, when alone.

“I don’t know what we can do, Rey,” Leia said softly. “But I would very much like for you to stay here with me. We can get you washed up and a clean bed to sleep in. Benjamin and I can send to your grandfather and let him know you are well—I imagine he is quite frantic not knowing where you are. Will you please be my houseguest? It’s rather lonely here since Benjamin decided he was too grand a person to live with his mother.”

Leia reached for Rey’s hands and squeezed them consolingly.

Rey nodded forlornly.

As kind as Lady Leia and Benjamin were, she knew there was precious little they could do for her. She would have to return to her grandfather and whatever punishment he devised for her. The thought of that alone made her stomach twist. As far as her plan to get away from him, it was foolhardy. She could see that now. She had no friends and no money of her own. She knew absolutely nothing of the world.

It was only dumb luck that Benjamin Organa-Solo had been the one to notice her and pluck her out of harm’s way.

“Yes, my lady. Thank you so much for your hospitality,” she said, her words formal as her eyes looked tearfully between mother and son. “I know I shall have to return to my grandfather. I am very sorry for the trouble I am causing you.”

Ben smiled wryly, and he leaned to playfully tug a lock of the young girl’s hair, “You don’t need to apologize, Mr. Palpatine. I believe it is my fault. You did ask to be left alone, but I am not particularly known for minding my own business.”

“And neither am I,” Lady Leia adds with a smile. “It’s a family trait.”


End file.
